A Cat's Meow
by stress
Summary: companion to Diabo! One, Two, Three, Four… they know who they are. And now, so will you. Pull up a chair and take a seat--this game has been going on for a long time.


Author's Note: _Can I just say that this short has been quite a long time coming? It was at the end of last March, beginning of last April (when _Diabo _was celebrating its one year anniversary) that I started to do a couple of companion pieces to the main story. After writing one about how Jack died, another about how Race died and a third about how Race knew the twins, I had decided to write one about the cats—and promptly forget. However, as the end is only two chapters away and the two year anniversary of the beast is quickly approaching, I thought I'd give it another try. _

_For anyone who knows (or ever wanted to know) who the four cats were, this is for you!_

Disclaimer: _I do not own, nor stake any claim, to any of the original newsboy characters—they are the property of Disney. _

_This short is part of the _a Maldição de Diabo _universe._

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A Cat's Meow

--

It was hazy in the room, full of smoke and dust though not one of the four occupants was handling a cigarette or a flame. The fog was dense, it was thick, and the people all but lost in the mist, but the air of the small room was unmistakable. It was a game room, a long time occupied, and those four occupants were game players.

Not to mention the fact that, if one had the opportunity to see this room—which, of course, they would not since, in actuality, _it did not exist_—it was doubtful that they could even spy the four players sitting around the square, wooden table. The reason for that, of course, was simple: it was these four people themselves who were creating the haze.

They were referred to as people and, in a way, that's correct. Or, at least, it was. They were people but… not now. Not entirely.

In a word, they were ghosts but, still, not quite. They were dead, yes, all of them had been for at least seventeen years—one as many as eighty-five.

Yet, though they were nearly transparent and so wispy that their very being seemed to be made up of the smoke that kept them hidden, none of them appeared as they had when they died.

They were ghosts, sort of, but first and foremost they were a memory. Locked in the appearance that they had worn the last time Jack Kelly laid eyes on them, these four were those who were—some unwilling, some unknowing, and most tired of being—tied to the dead Cowboy's Curse.

At the head of the table sat a slim blonde woman in her mid to late thirties though her very aura suggested that she was much, much older. There was a simple ring on the ring finger of her left hand—she had been married—and she wore a faded yellow dress that had only been fashionable in the late nineteenth century—and even then she'd been pushing it.

Another girl sat to her right, much younger than the first; she was a taller girl, with her dark hair split into twin braids. There was a look of faint annoyance on her face; it was faint because, of the four, she was the one whose spirit had been most drained by their recent excursion into the real world. Obviously exhausted, she was slouching in her seat, her eyelids nearly closed. She was resting, paying no attention to the other three at all.

The person that sat to _her _right was doing the opposite of resting. Even though he, like his companions, was sitting, the only boy in the room was bouncing anxiously in his chair. Shaggy dark blonde hair was falling into his face as he moved, blocking his right eye. His left one, however, was already hidden, covered by a faded brown eye patch. Flicking the fallen strands out of his face with an ink-stained hand, he lifted up his head arrogantly. He was smiling.

Of the four, the last girl was the one who appeared the most _there_, the most solid in form. She sat hesitantly, gingerly, on the edge of her seat as if unaccustomed to the position as she glanced from on of her tablemates to the next. She had bushy brown hair and eyes the color of the sea, and was a thin and wispy sort of girl.

She was the youngest of them all; she retained the uniform she had worn when she worked as a waitress during her teen years and, in order to do something with her hands, she was busy fingering the folds of her long skirt. And shaking her head.

Despite their differences—both in appearance and in attitude—the facts that they were dead and together were not the only similarities between them all. Each one of the four was, though the haze denied it, pale and wan, their color faded into the swirls of smoke that surrounded them, flowing through them. Most of their energy had been drained with their last excursion into Jack Kelly's Manhattan nook. 

They were sitting, all of them, but they had only just arrived back in their own proffered hideaway. There was a heavy sense of tension that settled over them, but palpable relief was equally as undeniable.

Still, it was quiet and, well, still in the small room. Stuffy, too. Time, in a sense, did not touch them there and, despite the heavy emotion that permeated the room, it all seemed so… stale.

"Well, that was pretty anticlimactic," the bushy haired girl announced wistfully as she dropped the edge of her skirt and, reaching forward, picked up a pile of cards from off the wooden table.

With her comment, the quiet was broken and much of the tension evaporated. Now that what they had to do was finally—_finally_—done, it was time to finish the game. The call had come so suddenly that the game had been forgotten; it was high time to return to it.

Of course, though, that did not mean that they weren't going to _talk _about it. After years upon years of being stuck together in the small room, there were only two things that the foursome could do: play cards and talk. They couldn't have one without the other.

"What did ya expect, Honor? The girl's got a pretty good head on her shoulders and all but ya were wearin' a cat suit. And, unless she can figure that 'meow, meow, hiss, scratch, meow' means Oscar Delancey is a filthy, murderin' bum, then I think we're lucky enough that she could see us at all."

The blonde woman, the eldest of the quartet both in age and in time spent haunting this small room, took her attention from her own hand of cards. There were faint wrinkles surrounding her blue eyes but they faded when she raised her eyebrows. "Blink," she began, admonishing the patch-covered boy, "be nice to Honor. She hasn't been… around as long as the rest of us."

There was a gentle quality to her voice, almost motherly, as she spoke. She finished her mild scolding with a gracious smile in Honor's direction.

Honor returned the woman's smile automatically, holding the grin until Esther's blue eyes were back on her cards. Only then did she dare to stick out her tongue at Blink. Blink only offered a cheeky grin in return.

The braided girl opened her eyes just in time to see Blink and Honor's childish exchange. Almost immediately she closed them again—but not before it was possible to see that she had mismatched eyes; her left eye was a bright blue, her right was a dark violet.

Then, with her eyes closed, and appearing as if she was speaking to no one, she said, "Around?" The word was drawn out into more syllables than the word head and there was a hint of a hiss in the pronunciation. And, considering that Fae's thick Irish brogue had stayed with her throughout her short life, it sounded quite odd. "Around? Why don't we call it what it is? Dead."

"Fae…" Esther began warningly. To her credit, the older woman had flinched only slightly at hearing Fae's question. Not surprisingly, she abhorred being reminded, or reminding the others, that they were all living impaired.

"Sorry, Mrs. J.," Fae responded automatically. After Esther, Fae had been in the room the longest and, after decades of mortal time, she had learned how to both push Esther Jacobs' buttons and appease the woman so that a motherly sort of lecture was not needed.

"Besides," Honor continued, as if she had not even noticed Fae's comment, "she heard me loud and clear when I was talking to her. You know she did."

"Yeah, 'cause it's so hard to hiss out a quick 'thanks'," Blink muttered as he pushed his face-down cards away from him. He could tell that he wasn't going to get to take his turn anytime soon. "You try tellin' one of those dames that Delancey did it and see how quickly they stop pettin' ya."

"Blink, remember what we talked about. It's not Honor's fault that she's Four, and gets Diana, or that you were Three and…" She sighed and, when she spoke again, she sounded apologetic. "…I don't think anyone expected that my great granddaughters were going to be twins."

"The twitchy one had soft hands," Blink said, his lips curving at the memory. He nodded his head to himself as he rapped his knuckles absently against the top of the wooden table.

"Her name was Ariadne, _Hayden_," Esther corrected, punctuating her statement with Kid Blink's true name. Her remark lacked bite, however; the argument regarding the Cearr twins—whether they were a help or a hindrance to the overall outcome to the Curse—had been ongoing ever since the first day that Blink met Ariadne.

"Yeah, yeah. The twitchy one."

"Aye, and she was far better than the Daite I got," Fae cut in, "Étaín's head was so far up in the clouds to even be considered restin' on her shoulders."

"Oh, Fae," Esther sighed. "My granddaughter was a good girl—"

"Your granddaughter was a dreamer, Mrs. J. It's no wonder I couldn't help her."

"It's a good thing, then, that Diana was able to hear me," Honor added, repeating herself again. She was very proud of herself, actually; when alive, she had been the plain one, the dependable one, the reliable one. While stable, she had never been the one to save the day—and look at her. Only a handful of days after meeting the fourth generation Daite girl, Honor had been able to help Diana learn the truth.

Blink huffed and started tapping his fingers absently against the table. After listening to Honor whine for two years that she was spending most of her free time with Jack in his nook without any sign of the fourth generation girl, it was quite obnoxious listening to her brag constantly about how great Diana was now that she arrived.

Well, there was only one thing for it. When in doubt, pick on the youngest.

"You're right, Honor. Diana seems like a great kid, and you did a good job finally gettin' one of the Daite girls to listen to that picture of Delancey," he said, keeping the sarcasm out of his voice. From her position on his right side, he could see that her chest was almost puffing out by his words and… he couldn't have that. "Oh," he began, as if he only just noticed it, "and, Honor? You got something on your forehead."

"I do?" Honor asked as she lifted her hand to her mouth. Forgetting what shape she wore, the former waitress gave her hand a quick lick before rubbing at her nose and then her forehead in an attempt to wipe away at—at something that, knowing Blink, probably wasn't there at all.

"That never gets old," Blink laughed as Honor only just realized what he had made her do… again.

Pouting, Honor lowered her hand. "That wasn't funny, Blink. I didn't play mind games with you when you came back after spending a bunch of time as Three."

"That's because ya weren't here yet. Some people," he said pointedly, "got to live a bit longer than some others."

"Can I help it if you went out and died before me?"

"Children!"

Honor and Blink turned to look at Esther and, in one voice, said, "Sorry, Mrs. Jacobs."

"That's better."

There was a momentary pause—Honor took the few seconds to readjust the cards in her hand—before the girl decided to change the subject. "Speaking of children," she began, a touch of a mischief sparkling in her eyes, "did you notice the boy that was tagging along with Diana?"

"Why yes, Honor, I did. And, I must say, it was quite the surprise that not only did I get to meet my great great granddaughter but my great great grandson, too." Esther let out a small laugh—for her, her involvement in the Curse was worth it solely because she got to witness—second-hand, but still—the growth of her family. "He looked just like Sarah's husband, didn't he?"

"Oh, yeah, he's a Conlon, all right," Blink agreed, but not for the same reason as Esther. Before settling down with Sarah in 1901, Spot had been known for being quite the womanizer. "And he's got it bad for Diana. I could _smell _the attraction in Jack's place."

Honor couldn't help herself. Still a little miffed at the trick he played on her earlier, she said, "Of course you smelled it, Blink. You sure couldn't _see _it." She tapped her left eye lightly in a blatant reference to his bum eye.

His smile, normally so readily available, slid off of his face. "That ain't funny, Honor."

"Really? I thought it was."

"Oh yeah? How 'bout I—"

"_Children_!"

"Sorry, Mrs. Jacobs."

This time, Esther just sighed. Sometimes it was tough being One.

Blink crossed his arms over his old, yellowed-with-age button down shirt. He debated whether or not he should continue bickering with Honor—after all, considering she had done her best (though he'd never tell her that) with Diana and they had all had the chance to say farewell to Jack's hideaway, he knew there wouldn't be much time before they all… passed on.

Besides, it wasn't really worth it, arguing with the girl—even if it was amusing. If she hadn't been able to forgive him for stiffing her for the bill back at Tibby's almost one hundred years ago in all this time, he doubted she would start being pleasant to him now.

He shrugged and, in his own way, changed the subject. "Jack still looks like his self, don't he?"

"Of course! Who's he gonna look like if not him?"

"I don't know, Honor. Maybe—"

While Fae was looking much solider than she had when they first arrived, she still did not open her eyes as she snapped, "Come on already, guys. Your arguing is gettin' a wee bit tiresome."

Esther took the opportunity to jump in. While the youngest two of their group respected the woman because she was, in age, appearance and seniority, the eldest, they respected Fae because the tall Irish girl—without even needing to—commanded it.

"Fae is right," she said, speaking gentler than Fae had. "You two have known each other for so long, should you still be fighting?"

"No…"

"I guess not…"

Fae yawned then—her canine teeth were longer than normal and her back seemed to arch as she stretched—and opened her eyes. They were wide and staring, and the duality of her iris colors was not nearly as offsetting as the way her teeth glinted as she grinned wickedly in anticipation.

She was not resting anymore. Her strength had, for the most part, returned and she was ready to get down to business. She had not lost a game in almost sixty years—and, even though this was boding to be one of the last, she did not plan on losing this one either.

"Besides, does it matter, anyway? We did what we had to do and it's done. It's almost over, yeah?"

The three others nodded, the two youngest almost sheepishly. They knew their bickering was pointless, especially now that they were all together again. They just didn't want to admit it.

Fae dared the others to say anything but they didn't. She lifted her cards up, guarding them against her chest. "Then, good. Either way, whether Jack saves his ass or gets thrown into Hell, our part in his damn Curse is finished. But," she continued, her one blue eye sparkling with determination, "this game ain't. Who was up before Honor summoned us to Jack's?"

Blink lifted his hand partially up in the air. It was never good, he knew, to bait Fae when she was in this kind of mood. Countless years stuck as Jack's feline servant turned her bitter and, when provoked, she could be counted on to revert back to her cat mentality. And, despite being more smoke than substance, those cat scratches _hurt_.

He crooked his finger in his direction. "It's my turn, Fae."

She nodded. "Alright. Let's get on with it already."

Narrowing his one good eye on the cards he held loosely in his right hand, Blink moved his lips wordlessly as he tried to guess what cards Honor was holding. The tip of his tongue was sticking out of his mouth before he turned his finger so that it was pointed at her. "Do you have any sixes?"

Honor cast her bluish-green eyes over the worn, decades-old cards in her hand before shaking her head emphatically.

"Go fish."


End file.
